We write to reaffirm our commitment to building a Green
Party that has a radical analysis of the society in which we live, and
promotes bold solutions to transform our society and address the root
causes of those crises; a Green Party that is independent of the two
money-dominated parties.

There is a deep social crisis in the US. This crisis
manifests in countless ways. One of its central manifestations is
through the political system. People have legitimate concerns about the
electoral system, which is manipulated through wholesale voter
disenfranchisement, massive voter suppression and the racist and
undemocratic historical logic of the Electoral College. In all fifty
states, voters from poor and marginalized communities, especially Black
people and other communities of color, have their votes suppressed and
are excluded from participation through various practices.

The Green Party cannot build the political power necessary
for the transformative changes we need by allying with two capitalist
parties that serve the interests of the wealthy. That is why it is
imperative that the Green Party is independent of those parties. We stay
independent to give people an alternative to the corruption of two
money-based parties. Greens reject donations from corporations and their
political action committees to ensure we are accountable to the people
and so that the people’s agenda is not superseded by the corporate
agenda.

There are significant electoral reforms needed to make
elections more democratic and more representative of the people. While
we support electoral reforms, including how the vote is counted, we do
not support the current recount being undertaken by Jill Stein.

The decision to pursue a recount was not made in a
democratic or a strategic way, nor did it respect the established
decision making processes and structures of the Green Party of the
United States (GPUS). The recount has created confusion about the
relationship between the Green and Democratic parties because the states
chosen for the recount are only states in which Hillary Clinton lost.
There were close races in other states such as New Hampshire and
Minnesota where Clinton won, but which were not part of the recount. And
this recount does not address the disenfranchisement of voters; it
recounts votes that were already counted rather than restoring the
suffrage of voters who were prevented from voting.

As a candidate, Dr. Stein has the right to call for a
recount. However, we urge the GPUS to distance itself from any
appearance of support for either Democrats or Republicans. We are well
aware of the undemocratic actions taken during the primaries by the DNC
and the Clinton campaign. Greens cannot be perceived to be allied with
such a party.

We remain committed to the Green Party’s four pillars and
ten key values, which have at their foundation grassroots democracy. We
urge the GPUS to prioritize its efforts on building our party from the
bottom up, working and organizing in direct solidarity with our state
and local parties and alongside and in defense of the rights of those
most affected by the injustices of a capitalist, white supremacist and
undemocratic system. This includes support for local efforts to prevent
the disenfranchisement of people of color via voter suppression or
because of felony convictions and to be more inclusive and participatory
in our decision-making processes and work.

RUDAW reports:Head of the Sunni tribe of Shammar in Iraq has voiced concern over
Saturday's official recognition of the Hashd al-Shaabi, a Shiite
paramilitary group with growing influence in the country following its
sweeping victories against ISIS militants across Iraq.
After a voting session on Saturday, Iraq's parliament granted legal
status to the controversial group which has managed to mobilize Shiite
forces and push back ISIS militants in several key regions across the
country in the wake of Iraqi army's humiliating defeat after ISIS
offensive in 2014.

But the Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces in Arabic) has
faced mounting criticism in the country as rights groups accused its
forces of illegal detention of Sunni men and destruction of their
properties in what activists view as Shiite retaliatory actions against
Sunni populations in Iraq.

"Members of Shia militias, who the Iraqi government has included among
its state forces, abducted and killed scores of Sunni residents in a
central Iraq town and demolished Sunni homes, stores, and mosques
following January 11, 2016 bombings claimed by the extremist group
Islamic State," a statement by the Human Rights Watch noted earlier this
year.

The Washington-based rights group has also accused the Shiite group of
possible war crimes and inhuman treatment of Sunni detainees.
"We understand that there is a war taking place at present in Mosul, but
on the other hand the Hashd al-Shaabi has been legalized and that we
deem as dangerous for Iraq's future," said Abdulrazaq Shammar, head of
the Shammar tribe, a large Sunni tribe in Nineveh Plains.

In 2014, when the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq finally pushed US
President Barack Obama to stop covering for thug and then-prime minister
of Iraq Nouri al-Maliki, a number of things should have happened
including a diplomatic surge.

But sooner or later, honest liberals will have to admit that Obama’s
Iraq policy has been a disaster. Since the president took office, Iraqi
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has grown ever more tyrannical and ever
more sectarian, driving his country’s Sunnis toward revolt. Since Obama
took office, Iraq watchers—including those within his own
administration—have warned that unless the United States pushed hard for
inclusive government, the country would slide back into civil war. Yet
the White House has been so eager to put Iraq in America’s rearview
mirror that, publicly at least, it has given Maliki an almost-free pass.
Until now, when it may be too late.Obama
inherited an Iraq where better security had created an opportunity for
better government. The Bush administration’s troop “surge” did not solve
the country’s underlying divisions. But by retaking Sunni areas from
insurgents, it gave Iraq’s politicians the chance to forge a government
inclusive enough to keep the country together.The problem was that Maliki wasn’t interested in such a government.
Rather than integrate the Sunni Awakening fighters who had helped subdue
al-Qaeda into Iraq’s army, Maliki arrested them. In the run-up to his 2010 reelection bid, Maliki’s Electoral Commission disqualified more than 500, mostly Sunni, candidates on charges that they had ties to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.For
the Obama administration, however, tangling with Maliki meant investing
time and energy in Iraq, a country it desperately wanted to pivot away
from. A few months before the 2010 elections, according to Dexter
Filkins in The New Yorker,
“American diplomats in Iraq sent a rare dissenting cable to Washington,
complaining that the U.S., with its combination of support and
indifference, was encouraging Maliki’s authoritarian tendencies.”When Iraqis went to the polls in
March 2010, they gave a narrow plurality to the Iraqiya List, an
alliance of parties that enjoyed significant Sunni support but was led
by Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite. Under pressure from Maliki, however,
an Iraqi judge allowed the prime minister's Dawa Party—which had
finished a close second—to form a government instead. According to Emma
Sky, chief political adviser to General Raymond Odierno, who commanded
U.S. forces in Iraq, American officials knew this violated Iraq’s
constitution. But they never publicly challenged Maliki’s power grab,
which was backed by Iran, perhaps because they believed his claim that
Iraq’s Shiites would never accept a Sunni-aligned government. “The
message” that America’s acquiescence “sent to Iraq’s people and
politicians alike,” wrote
the Brookings Institution’s Kenneth Pollack, “was that the United
States under the new Obama administration was no longer going to enforce
the rules of the democratic road…. [This] undermined the reform of
Iraqi politics and resurrected the specter of the failed state and the
civil war.” According to Filkins, one American diplomat in Iraq resigned
in disgust. By
that fall, to its credit, the U.S. had helped craft an agreement in
which Maliki remained prime minister but Iraqiya controlled key
ministries. Yet as Ned Parker, the Reuters bureau chief in Baghdad, later detailed, “Washington quickly disengaged from actually ensuring that the provisions of the deal were implemented.” In his book, The Dispensable Nation,
Vali Nasr, who worked at the State Department at the time, notes that
the “fragile power-sharing arrangement … required close American
management. But the Obama administration had no time or energy for that.
Instead it anxiously eyed the exits, with its one thought to get out.
It stopped protecting the political process just when talk of American
withdrawal turned the heat back up under the long-simmering power
struggle that pitted the Shias, Sunnis, and Kurds against one another.”

To
understand why Iraq is imploding, you must understand Prime Minister
Nouri al-Maliki — and why the United States has supported him since
2006.

I
have known Maliki, or Abu Isra, as he is known to people close to him,
for more than a decade. I have traveled across three continents with
him. I know his family and his inner circle. When Maliki was an obscure
member of parliament, I was among the very few Americans in Baghdad who
took his phone calls. In 2006, I helped introduce him to the U.S.
ambassador, recommending him as a promising option for prime minister.
In 2008, I organized his medevac when he fell ill, and I accompanied him
for treatment in London, spending 18 hours a day with him at Wellington
Hospital. In 2009, I lobbied skeptical regional royals to support
Maliki’s government.

By
2010, however, I was urging the vice president of the United States and
the White House senior staff to withdraw their support for Maliki. I
had come to realize that if he remained in office, he would create a
divisive, despotic and sectarian government that would rip the country
apart and devastate American interests.

America stuck by Maliki. As a result, we now face strategic defeat in Iraq and perhaps in the broader Middle East.

We could go on and on.

But those of us paying attention in real time didn't need the 2014
articles. Check the archives, we were sounding alarms the whole time
including noting in late 2011 as peaceful protests began that they were
the last chance before violence.

We were noting that the ballot box had now failed, the leaders had failed and now it would be up to the people.

Instead of heeding the protests, Nouri al-Maliki dubbed the Iraqi people
"terrorists" and began using his forces to attack them -- as well as to
attack reporters who covered the peaceful demonstrations.

His war on the Sunnis was in full bloom.

Two years after Barack forced him to step down and after the US
installed Hayder al-Abadi as the new prime minister, nothing has been
done to address the persecution of the Sunnis.

All the conditions that allowed for the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq still exist.

And the slog in Mosul continues -- Mosul's been held by the Islamic
State since June 2014. The 'liberation' effort's been going on 42 days
now.

When he returned to the city of Fallujah, Ayman al-Mamawi wasn’t
surprised to see his house in ruins. The 46-year-old had already
received pictures a friend had taken for him and he knew there was
substantial damage, even before he made the decision to return to his
home in Iraq's central Anbar province.As he got closer to his house, al-Mamawi said he started thinking
about his priorities in terms of reconstruction and return, what he
should start fixing and when.

“But as soon as I got closer I started to smell a really bad smell,”
al-Mamawi told NIQASH. “Finding the source of that smell became our
first priority. And finally we discovered what was causing it: There
were corpses in the ruins.”Al-Mamawi says that next he went to notify the security forces. “We
were too scared of explosives to count how many dead there were. And we
decided that the best thing to do would be to demolish the whole house
and get rid of the human remains – as well,” he notes, “as all of our
belongings and memories, which were also in the ruins.”Of course, al-Mamawi argues, the corpses of the dead fighters from
the extremist group known as the Islamic State that once controlled the
city, is a good sign. “It’s an indication of the success of the Iraqi
forces during the fighting,” al-Mamawi argues. “At the same time though,
it is also a criticism of the local government. They have not done
their job. There are still corpses everywhere!”Al-Mamawi is not the only returnee in Fallujah to have to deal with
this problem. People are finding rotting corpses all over the city and
now there is a fear they might cause an epidemic, not to mention the
psychological impact they have. The corpses are also a problem for the
local authorities and the security forces because of the concern that
there are explosives on them or hidden around them – special engineering
teams are needed to get rid of the bodies.

“It would never have occurred to me that one of my biggest problems
would be that there would be a corpse in every corner,” says Amer
Halbusi, a 53-year-old, who recently returned to his home in the Nazirah
area of Fallujah.

That's what 'liberation' in Iraq looks like to the people.

And the rulers have not been forced to address anything -- or even encouraged.

The White House has handed over F-16s, US troops, reconstruction funds (millions) and dropped bombs.

It just hasn't attached any of this to a requirement that the Iraqi
government show progress on the political front, that they work towards
reconciliation.

So it's all been one long waste.

Doubt it?

Refugees are dying in refugee camps.

RUDAW reports:All Mosul refugees at the Iraq-Syria border crossing where several had
died of the cold have been evacuated and brought to a camp in Syria, the
UN’s refugee agency reported on Saturday.

“2,458 people have now been moved from Rajm Slebi border crossing point
to Al Hol camp north-east Syria,” the UNHCR stated on their website. The
number includes 2,031 Iraqi refugees and 427 displaced Syrians.

“The crossing point, which is not an environment where humanitarian
agencies can adequately meet people’s protection and humanitarian
assistance needs, is now empty.”

Oh, Ro-Ro. Rosie O'Donnell stepped in it again and tracked it across the carpet and then tried to pretend she didn't. As RADAR explains:

Rosie O’Donnell is desperately trying to sweep her comments she made about Donald Trump‘s 10-year-old son under the rug.O’Donnell came under fire by fans on Twitter after she sent a bizarre
tweet out about the president-elect’s son Barron: “Barron Trump
Autistic? if so – what an amazing opportunity to bring attention to the
AUTISM epidemic,” with a video clip.

She should have her Twitter account suspended them. She was trying to
shame Donald Trump's wife by posting photos of First Lady's fully
clothed and then one of Ms. Trump nude.

She was trying to 'slut shame.'

She knows she did it.

And she got away with it.

Now she thinks she can walk it back and pretend like because her most
recently adopted child (that she refused to share custody of with her
ex-wife) has autism.

Okay, Ro-Ro, someone needs to break it down for you.

Your use of money to attack your ex-wives and keep them from the
children is disgusting. It's Bully Boy behavior. Here's another
thought Ro-Ro, this behavior could qualify as fraud and put your
adoptions at risk. You don't have to remain married to keep an adopted
child but if you promised a child two parents and you're now using
things like the suicide attempt (that your actions forced your latest
ex-wife into) to keep the women from seeing their children? That could
get you in hot water.

There is nothing in feminism that allows you to keep a mother from her child.

You're a bully.

And nothing allows you the right to put a cloud of suspicion over any child.

You were wrong and you should apologize.

But you don't have the integrity or ethics to apologize.

So instead, you'll just act as though you intended no harm and pretend you're puzzled why so many are appalled by what you did.

Children are supposed to be off limits.

But a woman who robs other women of their right to raise their own
children doesn't really seem like a loving parent, does she? She just
seems like an angry and bitter fool who sees children as toys and pawns
to be used.